We released today a new derived indicator using data from the CIA Factbook: Natural Gas Consumption per Capita.
We released today a new derived indicator using data from the CIA Factbook: Electricity Consumption per Capita
We added a new derived indicator using data from the CIA Factbook: crude oil consumption per capita.
Historical commodity prices updated with Dec 2010 data. Salmon & copra jumped over 13% in 1 month
Today we improved our US state tax revenues section by adding a new variable: tax revenue per capita. Check out the map below for an example showing tax revenue per capita for tobacco products:
New Hampshire collects the most taxes on a per capita basis than any other state. Now we will have to look for data showing if high taxes on tobacco products result in lower numbers of smokers.
One of the side benefits of running a highly trafficked global site is that we can analyze and confirm changes in the market share of PC operating systems. Here is a graph showing OS market share for the past 30 days:
The large blue slice of the pie chart corresponds to all Microsoft operating systems, while the small green slice corresponds to all Macintosh operating systems.
Contrast the graph above with a similar one for the same period in 2009:
If our visitors are representative of the overall universe of web users, it looks like Microsoft has lost significant market share to Apple.
Cotton prices are expected to keep climbing. Excess demand over supply is the main factor. World supply is not likely to catch up soon since cotton inventories are currently low. Cotton crops in China and India have been damaged due to bad weather, and floods in Pakistan have further decreased cotton output. The major cotton producers are India, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and the United States.
As of January 2010 the price of cotton was at 77.4 cents per pound. By October 2010 the price of cotton had climbed to 126.55 cents per pound, an increase of 63.5%. The world cotton market is valued at approximately 12 billion annually.
In addition to the cotton monthly prices in our commodity section, now we have cotton daily prices.
You can follow cotton daily and monthly prices at http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=cotton.
As of Tuesday December 7th, 2010 the average spot price in US cents per pound for upland cotton is 125.98.
The historical commodity prices section has been updated with numbers for August 2009.